Violence and formal challenge in the plays of Sarah Kane and Martin Crimp

Both Crimp and Kane are genuine innovators of the dramatic form. The issues dealt with in their works are related; they share similar concerns about the dangers of nowadays' society - and, with it, theatre. This might not be apparent at first sight because of the divergence of styles. Crimp's style is language-centred, hyper-realistic at times, drawing a lot from the theatre of the absurd. He provides a characteristic mixture of satirical edge, ironic detachment and hidden threat. While Crimp works exclusively with the contemporary sensibility, Kane's proximity to the tradition of tragedy can be seen in what she employs in her plays - the big passions, "love, hate, death, revenge, suicide."1 Kane differs from both modernists and postmodernists by her refusal of detachment and by her requirement of emotional involvement. Both the playwright and her characters are absolutist, truth-seeking and provocative. Crimp prevents emotional identification even in the plays that at first sight seem realistic; in the experimental dramas, the distancing device of having stories narrated rather than just shown "allows Crimp to mix acerbic satire with rapid shifts of tone and focus,"2 asking intellectual questions in a convincingly dramatic form. The intense emotional content, which in Kane is delivered by the explicit,..